Dear De:

I communicated with a different member this very morning about the concept of “mental prison”. I will explain how it relates to you, based on the information you provided and my understanding of it:

At home, with your parents, you were in a physical prison. You were stuck there, nowhere else to go and be: “I spent a lot of time at home (wasn’t allowed to go  out)”.

You lived in fear of your father, “I would get really bad anxiety when he walked into the house”- he was your prison guard.

“Sometimes, I would run to my room cause I would  get insulted and criticized”- you ran to your room for safety from the attacks of insults and criticisms.

You couldn’t talk  to your mother because “she would tell my dad every single thing”- she cooperated with your main prison guard. And she didn’t seem interested in anything you told her if it wasn’t about school.

“So, I sort of spent all my life alone and became extremely introverted to the point that going out gave me anxiety”- a child prisoner.

“Fast forward.. I’ve sort of accepted that when it comes to my parents, I can’t really ask them to love me.. I can’t be around them.. forming an intimate relationship with them”- can’t form intimacy with one’s prison guards, the ones who scare you. Fear and intimacy don’t  go together.

You no longer live with your parents, but in a different country, but you “find it very hard to form relationships with anyone… Anytime someone gets too close, I get really scared and anxious”- you are now out of the physical prison but in a mental prison- getting out of the physical prison does not free a person from the mental prison.

When you lived with your parents in their house, you really lived (as we all do) in that distance between the ears. Everything that we experience, we experience inside our brain/ body. Living in a different country, you still live in that short distance in between your ears, same place, and so, the physical prison of before, is now your mental prison.

Just as you were scared of your father and your mother, you are now scared of everyone. We project our parents into others.

“I feel like I’m not good enough” – just as you felt all along, as a child.

“it’s like I shame myself into retreating. I just tell myself ‘they probably hate you’ or ‘you’re nothing’.. its difficult to leave my room for days”- same experience- your patents shamed you, their voices in your brain keep shaming you. They communicated to you that they hated you (insulted and criticized you) and that you are nothing (ex., your mother was not interested in what you shared with her, didn’t attend to your fear of your father, but instead supported that fear) and you keep experiencing their hate and neglect and you still find safety in your room.

Personally, I have lived my whole adult life in a mental prison until I started what I refer to as my process  of healing. You can call it a process of setting myself free from that mental prison. I am still not completely free, but sometimes I am and I want to be more and more free.

What do you think/ feel?

anita

Dear De:

You are welcome. “I’m just scared that those voices will return as soon as I step out of the house and I’ll have to start fighting again to get back up. I really just what it all to end. How are you able to set yourself free from the mental prison?”

The voices will return, it is not possible for them not to return. The voices of your parents, their communications to you during your years of childhood, those become recordings in the brain that keep replaying. Sometimes you get a break, as when you first moved away, when something new and exciting happens, but then with a bit of time and nothing-very-new happening, these recordings get replayed yet again (not necessarily the same words they told you, often it is just the distress that gets replayed, or a series of thoughts that get replayed so quickly, you don’t “hear” the specific words.

How am I able to set myself free from this mental prison-

it started with my 2011 first quality psychotherapy, first therapist who was a caring, hard working, professional, empathetic, creative therapist. It is not easy to come across such a quality therapist.

It’s been 8 years of an ongoing process for me. More than four years of it are recorded in this very website, in my communications here with hundreds of members. To summarize: it has been an ongoing learning experience, a cognitive and emotional learning experience. This  kind of learning is synonymous with healing.

You have to heal from the very distressing experience of growing up in a hostile home. It takes a long time of healing to finally feel safe enough, safe enough to have the courage to open up to life instead of being closed to life, hiding from life, introverted.

It takes limiting or ending contact with people who are harmful to you, it takes being selective as to who you allow into your life and in what capacity (where, when, how, for how long, if at all). It takes experimenting with new things, such as you learning to swim. It takes forming new relationships with people who promote your healing, it takes a whole lot.

You do have to be patient with the process, a process that you have to take on. Lots of work involved, lots of thoughtful choices.

When I started therapy, Mindfulness as a big theme, it is a necessary skill. Learning to be mindful allows you the ability to live in the here-and-now, not in the then-and-there of your childhood.

What do you know about Mindfulness?

anita

Dear De:

My therapist at the time, 2011, introduced to me to Mindfulness via a series of Mindfulness guided meditations by Mark Williams. Following in-person sessions, my therapist emailed me homework to do before the next session. Part of each homework assignment was to listen to one of those meditations (they need to be listened to in order:  1, 2 and so on, but not all in one day. Let’s say you listen the first twice a day for a week before going to the second).

If you google Mark Williams guided mindfulness meditations you can probably listen to them, starting with the first one in the series. If you listen and follow the instructions in the first (to sit comfortably, take a deep breath and so forth, let me knows how it goes for you, will you?

anita